


On the Right Track

by SweetPollyOliver



Series: Queer advocacy group AU [6]
Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - College/University, Alternate Universe - Human, F/F, F/M, LGBTQ Character, LGBTQ Female Character, POV Female Character
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-04-28
Updated: 2013-04-28
Packaged: 2017-12-09 19:17:25
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,478
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/777061
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SweetPollyOliver/pseuds/SweetPollyOliver
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Five things Allison isn't and one thing she is.</p>
            </blockquote>





	On the Right Track

**Author's Note:**

> Feel free to pick me up on my French if I've gotten anything wrong; it's been a while since I was actively studying the language.
> 
> Ideally you'll have read the rest of the series before reading this fic as it references events that have already occurred, but it should stand alone. If you haven't read the rest of the series, here's what you need to know: it's a human AU, Scott and Allison don't meet until college, everyone is queer, Lydia sets up a queer advocacy group, and Stiles is trans (hence why the college accidentally had him rooming with Allison at the beginning of the school year.)
> 
> Big thank you to dirtydirtychai for the beta and fuckitfireeverything for giving me feedback.

Every so often, once it’s been long enough that she can pretend she’s grown and matured since her last failed attempt, Allison will drag out her pastels, or one of her six Moleskine notebooks, or the camera she saved up for a year to buy that sits in a box at the back of her closet, and she’ll work steadily for a week or two, convinced that this time it will be different. The last time she hadn’t tried hard enough, hadn’t stuck with it long enough, had gotten frustrated too easily, but this time, _this time_ , it would be different. She’d work every day and keep a record of her work and slowly, but steadily, she’d improve. This time.

Right now, it’s graphite sketching again.

The book she’s reading says that you shouldn’t look at what you’re drawing any more than is absolutely necessary. But… how often is absolutely necessary? How much glancing down is gratuitous?

She looks.

She kind of wishes that she hadn’t.

In theory, she’s drawing a bowl of fruit. Simple. She’s seen a million bowls of fruit in her life. The fruit on the table is plump and firm, catching a beam of sunlight from the window. 

Most of the fruit on the page is swollen and grotesque. She doesn’t even want to _think_ about the pineapple.

Looking back at some of the older stuff in her sketchbook, she thinks that she’s actually gotten worse; she’d had _some_ grasp of proportion last year at least.

The problem, of course, is that it’s easy to say that you’re going to work steadily and slowly improve over time, but it’s a lot harder in practice. She always secretly thought that she could skip all of that, or do it in a montage. Day one: pathetic attempt; day fifteen: slight improvement; day thirty: give up and cry; day thirty one: try again; day 566: technical masterpiece, pan out to Allison looking at at her work with a serene expression of accomplishment. If Van Gogh didn't even _start_ drawing until he was 27, then she can at least get better than she is now if she applies herself, right? 

Well, she’ll probably never know. Day thirty is her current record and she usually never gets that far. She has no patience for being bad at things. Being naturally gifted at archery made being _bad_ at something excruciating and embarrassing.

She flicks through the sketchbook again before putting it away and is suddenly glad that she didn’t bother telling her mother that she was starting to draw again this time. Allison is _not_ an artist.

*

On the mantelpiece in the living room there are several trophies flanking a framed picture of her mother in the last gold medal competition of her career. In every house they move into, the tableau is set up exactly the same way. 

The rest of the many trophies, medals, and plaques are rotated around the house based on how impressive they are, the more prestigious ones ousting less impressive ones from prime spots. The medals for attendance that Allison won when she was very little, along with anything she didn’t win gold in, are stored in the basement. 

No point taking up any room with something you didn’t want people to see. 

She has plenty of real estate taken up in the front hall, her own room, and on side tables in the living room to display her more shining moments. But nothing can usurp this photo, these trophies; they represent the height of her mother’s athletic career. 

Allison studies the picture of her mother snarling fiercely towards the camera and hurling a javelin as if it had said something derogatory about her haircut, the details as familiar to her as the lines of her bow, and picks at a loose string on her sling.

The thing is, she loves archery, she really does, but she’s never seen herself as An Archer in the same way her parents did. 

They are a family of athletes and she would be one too. When she was young, they’d sent her to a lot of different classes, trying her out on many different sports to see what she had the most aptitude for. She’d liked gymnastics, but as soon as it had started taking too much time away from her archery training, she’d been informed that she had gotten all she needed from the sport.

“You’re not a gymnast, Allison, you’re an archer. There’s no point wasting your time on hobbies. The competition certainly isn’t going to.”

Her parents don’t believe in splitting focus. That was why she was an only child, so that they could get it _right_ with her. 

Maybe if she’d had a little brother or sister, or hell, both, she wouldn’t have had such a laser focus put on her. Or, who knows, maybe they’d have worked on producing an entire Olympic team.

The injury wasn’t anyone’s fault. That’s what she tells herself in between periods of hating her parents for pushing her and long, indulgent spates of self loathing for not telling them that her shoulder was hurting, that she needed to _rest_ , but she hates looking weak in front of them, always has. It’s hard being the sole focus of either her mother or her father’s attention, and when they’re both on the case… well. 

They would have listened to her if she’d been reasonable and communicated better. Probably.

They aren’t bad parents or anything, they just want what’s best for her. How many people with the potential to be elite athletes ever fulfill it? Most people don’t have the drive or the support, and if there was one thing Allison could never say about her parents it was that they didn’t support her. She doesn’t think many other people have mothers who get them up at four in the morning to train, cook all their food for the week on Sundays and portion it up so that they could track their nutritional intake exactly, and tell them every day they were good enough and that they better damn well act like it.

She can’t be the best now. She could still compete on a national level and _maybe_ do okay, but she isn’t good enough for international competition, it doesn't matter how hard she trains or what she eats. 

She still doesn’t even know if she sabotaged herself on purpose or by accident.

One thing’s for sure though: she’s not an archer. Not anymore

*

Allison doesn’t really date, she doesn’t see the point. She doesn’t crush on boys beyond occasionally thinking that one is kind of cute, and besides, she moves around so much that she barely even has time to make _friends_. For a long time, she doesn’t really understand why people get so worked up about dating. Kissing looks messy, holding hands seems pointless and potentially sweaty, and really, what is the difference between going on a date with someone and just going out with a friend? 

She thinks that she’s a late bloomer, or that maybe romance is some elaborate conspiracy and that no one _really_ feels the things that are so lovingly reproduced in every movie, novel, tv show and goddamn commercial and it’s just a, well, romanticised concept, like the good guys always winning in the end.

Well, that is, until… her. _She_ changes everything

Allison’s father sells hunting rifles to Triskele Sporting Goods, and every single bow and archery accessory she’s ever owned has been courtesy of their very generous partner rewards programme. They’re the largest family-owned sports equipment franchise in the country, and the Hales are still heavily involved in the business. There are simply-framed candid family photos dotted across the walls of every branch that Allison’s ever been in, as if each store is some small town mom-and-pop type operation that just happens to be run by a family of improbably attractive millionaires. Beyond store publicity and the occasional non-profit drive, though, most of the family stays out of the public spotlight, with the exception of the company CEO’s daughter. Laura Hale started out demonstrating and reviewing products on YouTube and had quickly won a loyal audience with her sense of humour and charismatic on-screen persona. Now she writes an adventure and travel blog, filming videos and recording podcasts from around the world. To a lot of people, she is the face of Triskele Sporting Goods. 

She’s… incredible. Allison has seen Laura jump out of planes, abseil down cliffs, run up mountains, and explore caves dozens of times (not that she spends too much time watching these videos, whatever her dad says), and her heart still pounds every time she sees her beam into the camera or trade snarky comments with her brother, the rarely seen cameraman. But when Laura casually mentions an ex in one vlog, _Jane_ , and says, “Oh, huh, am I coming out to the internet? Surprise, internet!” Allison’s heart nearly bursts out of her chest cavity. 

Laura has an ex-girlfriend. Laura likes girls. _Allison is a girl._

She has to pause the video for five minutes before she can process what she’s feeling and calm down enough to hit play again. 

In hindsight, maybe assuming that romance was a sham just because she hadn’t wanted to kiss _boys_ had been a little naive.

It isn’t that she’s a late bloomer or picky or just unlucky. She just isn’t straight. 

*

She looks up from her bag, where she’s been digging around for a pen without luck, just as a dark haired boy with gentle brown eyes slides into the seat next to her does a little victorious fist-pump. 

“Two minutes to spare, awesome.” He grins at her raised eyebrow. “I totally thought I was gonna be late.” 

She can’t help but smile back. “You’re doing better than me; I think I actually came to class without a pen.”

“Oh, hey, I’ve got you covered.” He fishes a pen out of his bag. “I’ve got plenty. Here, keep it.”

“Oh- oh, thanks.” She accepts the proffered pen and clicks the cap on and off, watching from the corner of her eye as he settles into his seat, unwilling to let the conversation end there. “So… I don’t think I’ve seen you in here before, did you just get in on the waitlist?” 

He turns back to her eagerly, shifting his entire body in the seat to face her as he answers, leaning toward her, and she finds herself leaning toward him in response. “No, actually,” he grins conspiratorially, voice pitched pleasantly low, “the professor got fired. Rumor is it had something to do with a horse and a video on the internet that the school felt, ‘did not represent them in the best light.’”

Allison’s eyes go wide. “ _Nooooo!_ ”

“I swear, scout's honour, I am giving you a one hundred percent accurate, unembellished account of what potentially libellous gossips have been saying.” 

“So they just — cancelled your class?” she asks, composure regained a little. “They didn’t even get a grad student to teach or something?”

“Well, considering that the TA was the one telling everyone about it on Facebook-” he breaks off to laugh at Allison as she covers her gaping mouth.

“That’s awful,” she says, delighted.

“So, anyway, I had to register _again_ on Saturday and I got in from the waitlist last night. I just came from the bookstore.” He flips up the corner of an unfamiliar book, yellow and white price sticker declaring USED BOOKS ON THE HILL — WE BUY BOOKS.

“Ah, so that’s why you are blessed with an overabundance of pens,” she nods sagely.

He nods back and winks, making a finger gun and clicking his tongue. She can’t think of what to say next and, in the lull, he ducks his head and starts to drum his pen against the edge of the table.

Bam, bam, bam. Bam, bam, _bam_ , bam. Bam, bam, bam. Bam, bam. 

“So…” she says. He looks up. “Was there just a long line, or-”

“Ah-” he ducks his head again with an adorably embarrassed quirk to his lips, “no, actually. I just took a little too much time deciding on whether I wanted gel pens or felt tip or those uniball roller things-” 

“Oooh, so many choices.”

“I know, right? And then there were little baby highlighter keychain things. And _then_ when I got to this building I went to double check the room number on my phone, but I'd left it in my room. The lady at the department office told me where to go, though, so it’s all good.”

“Oh, that’s lucky,” Allison says, eyeing the unfamiliar red and yellow textbook on his desk. “You had quite the adventure.”

The bell rings and the new kid leans back in towards her and whispers, “So, this _is_ 19th century Spanish literature, right?” 

“Yes,” she replies, and her heart flutters just as the lecturer rises from his chair with a loud screech and starts writing, _FRENCH POETRY 101 - WK 2_ in unforgiving capitals on the whiteboard. 

“Today, we’re going to be talking about metre. In French poetry, metre is determined solely by the number of syllables in a line. The most frequently encountered metre in Classical French poetry is the _alexandrine_ , composed of two hemistiches of six syllables each. _Par example: « La fille de Minos et de Pasiphaë. »_ ”

The boy turns back to her and laughs under his breath.

“You can probably still make it if you go now, it’s only a quarter past twelve,” she whispers to him and ignores the part of her that wants to convince him to stay.

“I still don’t know where to go,” he replies, not sounding upset at all. “I might as well stay here and learn about French poetry instead of walking around not learning anything.”

Twenty minutes into the class, he passes her a note.

_Do you like poetry? What poet’s your favourite?_

Twelve syllables; two hemistiches of six. She writes back on the edge of her notebook and nudges him. He leans closer to read it.

_Sylvia Plath, I think, when I want to be sad_

_She’s good for that, all right, but don’t be sad, stranger!_

_Don’t worry, I’m not now, just confused about French :P_

_Do emoticons count? As syllables, I mean?_

_No, silly, they’re silent. Trying to catch me out? :P_

_Just keeping you honest. :P You know, I think you’re right/ verse is greatly enhanced with some emoticons! :D_

_Then you should join the class! Find your inner poet._

He scribbles a bit on his notebook, but five minutes later he still hasn’t given her a response, and another minute ticks by slowly on Allison’s watch before he silently asks for her dictionary. Class is nearly over before he looks up again, and Allison spends the entirety of it kicking herself for giving in to whatever bizarre impulse has been dictating her behavior since she laid eyes on him, but two minutes before class is over, he slides his notebook her way.

_Might be a good idea. Already learning lots / such as how to spell words like bestiality./ Still haven't figured out how to use it in verse._

So that’s what he’d been stealing her dictionary for earlier. 

When the bell rings and he stands up, she tries to think of something clever to say to him before he leaves, but then he waits for her to put her things away and walks with her outside.

“Sorry about the whole… Spanish literature class,” Allison says, tucking her hair behind her ear sheepishly. 

“It’s not a big deal, I probably wouldn’t have found it anyway,” he answers easily. “I had more fun with you than I would have dragging my backpack around the whole department.” 

“Oh, really?” she asks and tells herself that she absolutely does not recognise the way her heart speeds up momentarily.

“You are definitely more fun than load bearing exercise,” he says. “But if you really feel bad about it then you can make it up to me. Just write me a poem. One that’s longer than twelve syllables, I mean.”

She laughs, surprised by his answer. “Trust me, you don’t want my poetry inflicted on you. I can count syllables, but apparently there’s more to it than that.” She could have left it at that, but all of a sudden the words, “Let me get you a coffee sometime instead,” are leaving her lips when she sees his expression falter slightly. 

He smiles at her and she wishes for a moment that she _could_ write better poetry, because his smile deserves something epic.

The door slams loudly behind them as the last of the students rush on to their next classes, and they both jolt visibly at the reminder that they’ve got somewhere else to be. He quickly pulls another pen out of his pocket, asks, “Number?” and offers her his arm. “You’ll have to just write it on me-”

“Yeah, no phone.”

“No phone.”

“I remember.” 

She can feel herself blushing as she writes, doesn’t quite manage to look at him straight on when she gives him back his pen and offers her own arm in return. The feeling of his hand loosely circling her wrist makes her skin tingle. 

“Okay, I have to run, my next class is over in the engineering quad. Call me when you’re free and we’ll go for some poetical coffee.” He throws her one final happy grin and waves as he starts backing away, gearing up for his run across campus. “I’m Scott, by the way.” 

“Scott! Absolutely. See you- not in French, but I’ll see you for coffee,” she calls after him, and he finally turns and runs off to his class.

 _Getting coffee is a date. I just asked him out on a date_ , she tells herself as she walks back to her dorm building. She’s always had pretty firm opinions on dating guys… although they possibly aren’t as firm as she’d thought. 

She’s never come to a 100% positive conclusion on labels other than not-straight, but her feeling has been that while minor flutters over guys do occur from time to time, she only wanted to date women. 

So much for that idea.

When she gets back to her room, Stiles looks up from his bed where he’d been napping.

“Hey, Allison,” he says, dropping his head back onto his pillow. “Learn anything interesting?”

“Well,” she says, leaning back against the door. “I was already pretty sure I wasn’t, but it turns out I’m _definitely_ not gay.”

*

Allison can see why Derek likes working in the club room. The camaraderie and pizza there beats freaking out over Camus and the subjunctive tense alone in her room. Well. Alone if she’s lucky. Her new roommate isn’t as nice as Stiles.

“If I write the essay in French then I’ll get an extra ten percent added on to my final grade,” she says to Lydia. “Buuut, I’m not sure if my written French is good enough to write a passing essay.”

She drops her head onto the desk

“The Classics department is doing that with their exams, too. I’m writing my essay on Cicero in Latin,” Lydia says, because, unlike Allison, she’s perfect and could probably write beautiful essays in other languages when she was four. “Have you downloaded the past exam papers yet?”

Allison nods without lifting her head. Lydia threads her fingers through Allison’s hair and strokes her scalp.

“I’ll help you write some practice essays. Once you have a few, you can memorize them and then write a Frankenstein’s essay in the exam.”

“Do you even take French?” Allison asks. Lydia is a triple major and it’s hard to keep track of all the classes she’s been taking.

« _Non, mais je parle un petit peu. Aimeriez-vous pratiquer à parler en français pour le reste de l’après-midi?_ »

Allison groans and then nods again.

« _Parlez vous combien d’langues?_ » she asks.

Lydia shrugs. « _Avec les langues mortes? Huit. Mais, pas couramment. Votre accent français est meilleur que le mien_ »

« _Peut-être._ » Allison replies, lifting her head from the desk. « _Mais, je ne suis pas polyglotte._ »

*

She can’t believe she hasn’t done this yet, but between classes, and everything else, she’s barely had time to look at many of Laura’s new videos, let alone go through all the old ones to try and get a glimpse of Derek to see if he’s _that_ Derek. She supposes she could ask him, but she and Derek could out-awkward a baby giraffe when they talk to each other without anyone else there to intervene.

_There._

A younger and skinnier Derek Hale steps out from around the camera and does the most surly looking spin she’s ever seen to model the men’s version of the tee-shirt Laura is wearing.

“A _ha_!”

“Are you cyber-stalking Derek?” Scott asks from behind her, looking over her shoulder at a freeze frame of Derek mid-spin. 

“No,” she says primly. “I’m satisfying my intellectual curiosity.”

“Your curiosity about Derek?” Scott asks. 

“Ugh, okay, this is going to get really nerdy really fast, but you know Triskele Sporting Goods?”

“This sounds more jocky than nerdy, but I know Triskele.” 

“So the CEO’s daughter Laura makes these videos where she goes around the world bungee jumping and climbing mountains and kayaking and- it’s a lot better than I’m making it sound, okay? But anyway, Laura’s brother used to be her camera guy and he really, really looks a lot like Derek, so I was just trying to find out if they’re the same person. But, yeah, it’s definitely him. He’s filled out a lot since a couple of years ago.”

“Not you too,” Scott groans. “Stiles is already hung up on him, it’s disgusting.”

“Oh,” Allison laughs. “No, no, not like that, not even a little.”

“Good,” Scott sits on her knee and she rearranges her legs so she can hold his weight comfortably. “Derek is a butthole, don’t ever leave me for Derek.”

“I promise,” she says. “But I won’t lie to you, I will leave you for Laura if she ever asks me to run away with her.”

Scott turns around to look at her. “You’d ask if I could come too first right?”

Allison leans her head to one side and pretends to consider it.

“I guess you could come along. If Laura was okay with it.”

“That’s a relief.”

She leans up to kiss him.

“Do you want to watch this with me? This one’s really interesting, they spent a whole week in the Philippines.”

“Sure,” he says.

“Okay, well let’s take the laptop over to my bed, because you’re making my legs go to sleep.”

They untangle themselves and relocate to her narrow bed, ending up on top of each other all over again. She hits play as Scott rests his head on her shoulder and laughs at the dirty look Derek shoots Laura on the screen. 

“She seems really cool,” Scott says. “It’s weird how much she looks like Derek.”

“I know, right, it’s almost like they’re related or something,” Allison says and sticks her tongue out at him.

“Uncanny,” Scott agrees. 

“Hey, does Stiles know about these videos?” Allison asks.

“I’m pretty sure if he knew about them I’d have heard all about them by now. Remember he went on that big ‘research’ kick back in the fall?” 

“Oh god, I do remember that, he had a whole folder on his desktop. I guess just googling ‘Derek Hale’ doesn’t get you anything about Triskele. He’s going to kill me for holding out on him, isn’t he?”

“You are not long for this world,” Scott agrees. “You’re just realizing that you could have googled ‘Derek Hale + Triskele’ instead of going through three hours of videos, aren’t you?”

Allison laces their fingers together and rests her head against Scott’s. 

“So I’m not a master cyber-stalker, shut up.”

“I didn’t realise only _masters_ tried googling first- ow!”

She kisses the top of his head to make up for the kick to his calf.

“Shutting up.”

Two hours later, Scott is a devoted convert to the cult of Laura Hale, adventurer extraordinaire, and they get up just long enough to gather snacks and rearrange Allison’s bedspread into something more conducive to Friday night YouTube marathons. Allison’s roommate is out with her sorority sisters partying it up, and she’s historically stayed out most Friday nights, so Allison and Scott have the room to themselves. 

Izzie would be tsking at Allison if she were here, and will probably come drag herself in early tomorrow afternoon and announce that she hopes Allison appreciates how she gives up the room for sexytimes every weekend like the considerate roommate that she is, and when Allison rolls her eyes, Izzie will laugh at her and say, no, seriously, you are so married it’s not even funny. I give you a free pass for an empty room and you didn’t even pull out your sexy bra, did you? You probably watched Firefly all night again. 

She supposes that she should be going out and kissing strangers with exciting facial piercings too, but to be honest she never really _wanted_ to do that so much as she thought that she had to check it off a list of College Experiences(TM). Instead, she seems to have skipped ahead to being practically married, because all she wants to these days is hang out with Scott. They haven’t even gone out on a _date_ date since before Christmas, they spend most nights in each other’s rooms doing work for classes, or avoiding doing work for classes, and developing an ever more alienating series of inside jokes. When they do go out, they go out together and play the sickening couple, staring into each other’s eyes and sighing instead of mingling with anyone else much (it had started out as a joke, but it’s getting less and less ironic by the day — this is how she started liking Lady Gaga, she should have known better).

It’s comfortable and scary all at once, like a couch so soft that once you’ve sunk into it there’s a very real chance you might just decide to stay there because climbing out would be too hard. 

And, okay, so maybe it’s a Friday night and she’s not mixing Jager bombs with cheap beer like most 19 year old college students and she’s not working through the bendier chapters of the Kama Sutra. She’s in her comfiest pyjamas tucked up against her boyfriend — who is wearing her second comfiest pyjamas, with the pink and green butterflies — and carefully eating Cheetos and Reese’s Pieces in bed while watching grainy footage of her teenage crush spelunking down a cave. So maybe it is a little unadventurous and boring and, yes, slightly married. Allison is 19 and in love. She’s allowed.

**Author's Note:**

> I am SO SORRY it has taken me this long to get this up. D: 
> 
> I'm a little anxious about this one -- it deals with Allison being unsure about her sexuality (and, trust me, she hasn't gotten it all figured out by the end of the fic, watch this space re: Allison when I get to writing the long fic) and being a queer person in a straight passing relationship. I really hope that I've gotten the tone right and haven't accidentally written something that reads like "being queer is a phase" or something along those lines.


End file.
